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Review: Green Day – Brixton Academy 21/08/13

Although Green Day‘s music has been alive and well in the UK, with their musical coming to our shores last winter, its been a long time since the band actually set foot in a venue around here.

That explains the excitement over tonight’s performance. Brixton Academy being a relatively small venue for a band that have sold out the Emirates stadium, its clear why the ticket price (a steep £40) hasn’t deterred the fans.

Starting off on a high note, Queen’s Bohemian Rapsody pours out through the speakers before the band’s drummer, Tre Cool appears onstage, dressed as a rabbit.

Theatrics aside, the band put on a good show. Launching into their more recent hits, ‘Know Your Enemy’ and ‘Boulevard Of Broken Dreams’ recieve a resounding applause from the audience.

what follows is an inspiring story from frontman Billie Joe, about his experience of drug use and getting clean. The opening rant about being hounded by cameras, though, is more worrying than uplifting.

The trio then bravely decide to play the whole of their first album, ‘Dookie’. This, being based on it being nearly the 20th anniversary of the record’s release, means that many of the audience members are not actually aware of the tracks.

The stongest moments of the record, primarily the singles ‘Minority’ and ‘Basket Case’ go down well, but the show begins to drag and many in the seating area are making full use of it.

It comes as a relief when Billie Joe signifies the end of that section of the performance, with the emergence of a t-shirt gun. Firing off the last item into the audience, the band return to top form.

The epic ‘St Jimmy’ is the band’s choice for an encore, receiving a full and joyful appreciation from the fans. With the thunderous applause that follows, it seems the band are back on track at last.

2 thoughts on “Review: Green Day – Brixton Academy 21/08/13”

Not one of the groups I listen to a lot but easily one of the best concerts I’ve seen (I think it was at Edgefest ’99). I’d love to see Dookie in its entirety, though I’d agree, perhaps it might have been better to maybe not surprise the audience by playing the whole thing as part of the set.
But going to a specifically all dookie show, could be good!